


Closer

by battle_cat



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Body Horror, Cunnilingus, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Furiosa is the most eaten out character in fandom history, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Literal Sleeping Together, Max Comes Back, Nightmares, Oral Sex, Past Rape/Non-con, Platonic Cuddling, Porn with Feelings, Sharing a Bed, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, and then not-so-platonic cuddling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-14 14:46:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9186878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: They sleep better side by side. Things escalate from there.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A PWP that got out of hand. Started in response to [this kinkmeme prompt](http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/450.html?thread=594882). Well, that doesn't fit into my main [verse](http://archiveofourown.org/series/595489) so it needs a new timeline. New timeline starts growing more scenes...and more scenes...and here we are.
> 
> The first chapter is not smutty, but we'll get there soon enough. Tags will update as we go.

When Max first comes back, he sleeps in his car.

It takes her a few days to figure it out. The Citadel has guest rooms, and she offers him one, only to walk by it on the first morning and find the door open and the bed untouched. She smothers a flash of panic— _he just got here_ —but when she makes her way to the garage he is there, leaning into the engine of his scavenged vehicle. 

Two nights later she wakes up sometime past midnight, shaking and drenched in sweat, her heart pounding from a vague terrifying dream of being held down. Her limbs are buzzing with adrenaline, demanding she move, so she tugs on her boots and trousers, wraps a blanket around her shoulders over her thin sleep shirt and goes out to pace the Citadel.

Without conscious planning she finds herself in the garage. When she passes his car she notices the tangle of blankets on the driver’s seat inside. _Oh._ After a moment she spots Max, his figure outlined in the moonlight coming in from the maw of the lift. He’s sitting with his back against the rock wall of the platform by the lift brake, fully dressed and huddled in his jacket.

“Hey,” she says. He startles, but only a little.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she says.

“Mm. Me either.” His gaze flicks away from her for a moment, out to the wasteland. “Bad at sleeping.”

“Yeah.”

He inclines his head toward the bare rock next to him. She sits down by his side, and for a moment they just stare out at the desert together.

It’s cold on the platform. She shivers and inches closer to him. His body is a ribbon of heat and she presses into it before she can stop herself. He doesn’t flinch. After a moment, she feels his arm slide around her back.

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at her, but the steady rhythm of his breathing is comforting. She tries to match it, letting the nightmare adrenaline slowly leech out of her body. At some point she leans her head on his shoulder, and after a moment she feels his temple come to rest against the top of her head.

The next thing she’s aware of is morning light.

She groans, flexing muscles gone numb and stiff from sleeping against the stone. It’s daylight, but early still. Next to her Max utters a confused grumble.

“Sorry.” She rolls her shoulders with a grimace. “Fell asleep.”

“Me too.” A flicker of confusion on his face. He flexes his bad knee with an audible pop.

In the golden light of sunrise she can see the shadows under his eyes. “Have you been sleeping in your car?”

He shrugs. “‘S…familiar.”

“It’s _cold_.”

“Mm.” He’s busy fiddling with a part of the brace he wears on his left leg, adjusting a strap. With his head bent, the edge of the Citadel brand just peeks out above the collar of his jacket.

(She remembers him sleeping in the Rig, against the door where he’d pointed a gun at her not twenty-four hours before, during the long day when she drove past dune after dune telling herself the Green Place must be beyond the next one…or the next one…)

“You could. Come sleep in my room,” she says. “If it would help.”

His hands stop moving on the strap. He makes a noncommittal grunt.

She mostly expects him to keep huddling in his car. But that night he shows up at her door with hunched shoulders and a bedroll.

 

She would have shared the narrow mattress with him, but he spreads his bedding out on the stone floor next to it before she can offer.

“This okay?” His gaze flicks to her.

“Yeah.” She gives him a soft smile, and he looks away quickly.

She’s already in her sleep clothes. He just takes off his boots and jacket, unstraps his brace and lies down fully clothed. She extinguishes the lantern and climbs into bed.

In the morning she wakes up to discover that she’s rolled over toward him in the night, her fingers just brushing his back where he’s curled up under the blanket.

 

She tugs off her sleep top in the corner by the water pitcher, and it’s only when she hears his hiss of breath and looks over her shoulder to see him staring at the opposite wall that she thinks anything of it.

He has so many strange Old World qualities, like modesty.

“I’m finished,” she says when she has washed and dressed. “You can wash if you’d like.”

His cheeks are still a little flushed when he trades places with her. She makes sure he sees her turn her back to him before she starts strapping on her arm.

 

She hears him wake up in the dark. No sound other than a gasp of breath and a frantic rustle of blankets, but enough to pull her out of the gray haze of sleep. When she rolls over she can just make out his form in the moonlit room, hunched over with his head in his hands, chest heaving.

“Max?” she whispers after half a dozen breaths.

He jumps, and her eyes have adjusted enough to see him blink rapidly a couple of times before focusing on her. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Didn’t…mean to…” He scrubs a hand over his face.

She folds back the blanket. “Come here.” And then, when his brow wrinkles in surprise: “If you want.”

For a moment he’s frozen. Then he crawls into the bed next to her.

The mattress is big enough for two, but just barely. She’s been close to him before, but lying down is somehow different, and he’s solid and undeniably male, and some deep instinct twitches at the bulk of him in her bed even though it was her idea. She quashes it ruthlessly.

There’s only one pillow, and their faces are very close together on it. She can feel his hot breath on her cheeks, smell his sharp scent, old sweat and leather and dust. Perhaps it’s too much for him too, because after a moment he rolls over and curls up with his back to her.

He’s hunched up, as if he’s trying to take up the minimum amount of space. But when she scoots over to close the inch of space between them, he doesn’t pull away. She drapes a careful arm over his ribcage. He lets out a shuddery sigh, and she can feel some of the tension drain out of him.

“Is this okay?” she whispers.

“Yeah.” His voice is rough. He clears his throat. “Yeah.”

He is incredibly warm. She presses a little closer. “Good,” she breathes.

They both sleep better than they have in ages.

 

The next night there is no discussion. He climbs into bed with her and this time they shift around so that she is the one with her back to him, his body curled around her and his breath warm on the back of her neck.

When she jerks awake some time later she nearly headbutts him. Under the blaring terror she feels a bitter wash of disappointment. Of course it was stupid to think his presence would somehow smother thousands of days’ worth of nightmare fuel.

He makes a sleepy hum from somewhere behind her shoulder. When he puts a cautious hand on her arm she realizes how much she’s shaking.

“Hey,” he mumbles. “‘S okay.” He’s nudging at her shoulder, and finally she gets it through her panic-scrambled brain that he wants her to roll over. She turns to face him, carefully not meeting his gaze, and his arms wrap around her and fold her against him, her head resting on his shoulder. One of his hands runs slow soothing strokes over her back.

Even now, some two hundred days after the road war that upended the Citadel, she is not used to being touched. Not outside of the infirmary and the sparring pits. Not like this. She realizes she’s clenched her arms instinctively in front of her torso, shoulders hunched up, protection against a threat that’s not coming. She forces herself to relax a little, makes herself unfold enough to rest her hand on his chest.

“‘S okay,” he repeats, already halfway asleep again by the sound of his voice. His hand is stroking the same repeated line up and down her back and it’s almost hypnotic. She can feel his heartbeat under her cheek and under her hand on his chest, a steady counter-rhythm to her own hammering pulse, and he is _warm,_ like always, radiating heat like the desert stones hold on to the sun. She can’t remember when she got used to being so cold all the time.

His other hand lands gently on the back of her neck, and when she doesn’t flinch, he kneads at the tension she didn’t even realize she’d been holding there. A jagged breath escapes her. There’s a sharp ache in her chest that she can’t identify, but now that the fear of the nightmare is receding she is too tired to puzzle it out. She lets her arm slide around his ribcage and her eyes drift closed.

 

In the morning they are still in the same position. She wakes up to find that she’s drooled on his shirt a little.

“Sorry,” she mutters, wiping uselessly at the damp patch on the cloth. When she looks up he’s got a strange expression on his face, but he blinks it away as soon as she catches it.


	2. Chapter 2

She wakes up on a pale gray morning to find that her shirt has rucked up in the night and his hand is resting on her bare stomach.

She can tell from the rhythm of his breathing against her back that he is still asleep behind her. She doesn’t think he did it on purpose. In all their nights of sleeping side by side he’s been assiduously careful in how he touches her, checking for her response to each degree of inching closer.

His fingers are rough and calloused and warm, and without warning she imagines them running everywhere over her skin. It sends a sudden, unmistakable pulse of heat through her, and—fuck. She is not prepared to deal with that.

For so long, it hadn’t even been an option. In the beginning, after the Vault, she’d viciously fought off every advance, the coercive ones and the ones that might have become allies, ruthlessly building her reputation as too kamikrazy to be worth messing with. Throwing her lot in with the War Boys meant forsaking the world of women, the milkers and gardeners and kitchen workers with whom things might have been easier. And then, once she became an Imperator—well, there were plenty who had their way with crew when they wanted. But even if she had wanted that—she was already different. Making herself as sexless as possible was the least dangerous option.

But. Max isn’t a War Boy. He isn’t an Imperator twice her size in a dark corridor. He isn’t Citadel. He’s slept by her side for a dozen nights and she’s finally figured out that the strange ache in her chest is _relief,_ the exhausted collapse of being able to let your guard down after a long watch.

As improbable as it seems, she feels safe, not just with him, but because of him. It’s not something she would have believed possible, with anyone, and certainly not with any man.

And, apparently, she has not completely forgotten how to want.

She has no idea if he desires her, or women, or anyone. He certainly hadn’t given more than a passing glance to the barely-clad Wives over the three days in the Rig, not the kind of glance she knew meant trouble. Maybe that’s why this is even possible, her lying pressed against the length of his body wondering what his hands would feel like elsewhere on her skin. Or his mouth, if his lips are as soft and plush as they look—

Gods dammit.

 

She says nothing to him about it, and if she looks at him any differently that morning he does not remark upon it. 

But it’s like an invisible switch has been flipped and she suddenly finds herself noticing the most absurd little details about him. The way his eyes look blue in some lights and green in others. The tendons in his hand as he loosens a rusty bolt on the salvaged truck they just hauled in. The way sweat gathers at the ragged collar of his shirt, and the few curly hairs she can see beneath it. The way he bites his lip while searching by touch for something deep in the engine.

More than once she thinks he catches her watching him, and is it her imagination, or does he hold her gaze a little longer than normal?

It isn’t so surprising, she supposes. She’d known plenty a driver and lancer to bunk up together, battle camaraderie spilling over into something else. Who else could know you better than the person who fought side by side with you, human and human and vehicle working together as one?

(She remembers him handing up her rifle as she balanced on the seat and the dash of the Rig, loaded in the time it took for her to open the sunroof, and a little shiver runs through her.)

She’d exempted herself from that kind of closeness for so many thousands of days. But…things are different now. And _he_ is different. And after the initial lurch of unfamiliarity with the idea, she finds herself wondering what he would be like.

 

When she changes into her sleep clothes, he turns his back, as always. For the first time the moment feels charged, a shiver of gooseflesh running over her when slides her leathers down.

She slides into bed, propped up on her elbow while he sits on the edge of the mattress to unstrap his brace, the motions as familiar and practiced as the way she puts on her arm.

“Do you want me?”

He makes a little choking sound and looks up, his brow going extra wrinkly.

“I mean, do you want to fuck me?” she says, although she’s pretty certain from the deep flush in his cheeks that he got her meaning the first time around.

“Mm.” He’s suddenly very interested in his brace again. “Don’t, mm…want you to think…I came back, or, I’m doing…this”—he gestures vaguely to the space between them—“just to…”

“To get in my pants?”

He exhales a dry huff of breath that she thinks might be a laugh.

“What if that’s what I want?”

He licks his lips. “Hm, I’m not—you deserve—” The brace clatters to the floor, and his hand clenches against his thigh as if he needs something to do with it.

“Max.” His other hand is resting on the mattress, and she reaches forward and runs her thumb over the scarred skin of his knuckles. He squeezes his eyes shut.

“Tell me if you don’t want this,” she says, because she can’t read whatever’s making his breath go shaky.

“It’s not—” He clears his throat, but his voice is still rough when he says, “I want it. Yeah.” He meets her gaze for a blinding second and there’s something wild and scared in his eyes, but he doesn’t pull away when she covers his hand on the mattress with her own and squeezes.

“Good,” she says, and the corner of his mouth ticks up a little. She draws a breath before saying the next part. “I have…” _Damage,_ she thinks. “History,” she settles on.

“Me too.” He blinks. “Different kind.”

“So…we go slow.” 

He nods. “Yeah.”

“And…you can’t come in me.”

“Okay,” he says, without hesitation and without seeming to expect an explanation. He’s looking at her earnestly now, and she feels an unexpected rush of warmth.

“I would like to kiss you now,” she says, and that gets a real smile out of him, and it’s mostly in his eyes that look very, very green in the lamplight, and it’s dazzling.

He shifts to lie down on the bed next to her, their faces close on the pillow, and she thinks of the first night they crawled into bed together. When he leans into her space he moves slow, but it feels as easy as moving together in battle, his hand on the back of her neck and hers around a fistful of his shirt as their lips meet. 

It’s been ages, _ages_ since anyone tried to kiss her, and she isn’t quite sure she remembers how. But Max does. The first presses of his lips are deliberate, careful, but not shy. It’s easy to let her mouth open for his tongue, easy to let their breath sync up like twin pistons of the same engine, and then his arm is around her back pulling her closer; her fingers are in his hair as he sucks at her bottom lip; she bites at his mouth and he bites back and it’s like a spark to line of guzz and she’s lit up with want.

She’s grinding against his hip before she realizes it, his body half on top of hers as he puts his stupid mouth everywhere he can reach: her throat, her jaw, the line of sweat along her collarbone. She thinks his weight should feel confining on top of her but she is suddenly aching for friction and pressure.

His hand is on her back, her waist, her breast, stroking her through the thin fabric of her shirt. She takes it firmly and moves it to the same spot under her clothes, where she can press bare skin into his touch. She feels him smile against her neck and then he runs a rough thumb over her nipple and she moans.

“Will you touch me?” Her voice sounds raw, wrecked, and it makes her shiver. His hand trails down, tracing a line of electricity over her ribcage, her stomach, sliding under the waistband of her shorts. She keeps waiting to feel afraid but this is so different, he is so different from anything she’s known in seven thousand days that she wants to fang it and see how far they can go.

His hand cups around her pussy, fingers trailing through wetness, and she wraps herself around him, her leg hooked over his hip and her face buried against his neck. His fingers find her clit and stroke, slow and rhythmic, and it doesn’t seem like much but it builds and builds until she's swamped under a hot wave of pleasure. She bites down on his shoulder to stifle the jagged noise she makes.

She is shaking, raw and open, and to have something to do she reaches for his belt. The fastenings of his trousers seem unnecessarily complicated but she manages to wriggle her hand in and stroke along the hot flesh of his cock.

Max makes a startled noise and her wrist is suddenly wet with come.

“Oh.” She extracts her hand, but not before another sticky dollop lands in her palm. Max has his face pressed into her shoulder. He’s shaking a little, and after a minute she realizes he’s laughing.

“You’re. Very effective,” he mumbles. He pulls back a little to look at her and, oh, fuck, he’s sweaty and his hair’s all disheveled and his lips are even more ridiculous, moist and swollen from kissing, and his eyes are shining. He looks _happy._ She has never seen him look happy before.

He still has an arm around her shoulders and she is not inclined to move away from it. She snags a corner of the sheet and wipes her hand on it. Max, for his part, is licking his fingers with relish. She can taste herself on his tongue when he pulls her in to kiss her.

She should get the washing cloth to wipe them both clean; they’ll be sticky in the morning otherwise. But she is boneless and exhausted now, and her head fits perfectly against his shoulder.

“That was slow, eh?” Max says after a moment.

“Guess that’s as slow as I go,” she mumbles, feels his soft laugh rumble through his chest.

“I liked that,” she says after another half-dozen breaths of silence. “Doing that with you.”

“Mm. Me too.” His lips press briefly against the top of her head.

“Let’s do more of that.” He makes a soft noise of agreement. “But not right now. Now we sleep.”

He chuckles again, something more felt than heard, and pulls her a little closer against him. When she sleeps, it’s without dreams.


	3. Chapter 3

She wakes up facing the wall, and is instantly seized by the idea that she’s overslept. There is no one to keep her schedule now but her, no one waiting to find fault if she is ever a step slow, but the impulses linger.

But no—the light coming in her narrow window is the pallid dawn kind. After a moment of scanning through her body she realizes that the feeling of having overslept must have come from the fact that she’s _relaxed_. She feels rested and calm in a way she hasn’t in…she can’t remember how long.

She rolls over and Max is lying there fast asleep on his back, his face peaceful and one arm stretched out toward her, the embrace she must have shuffled away from some time in the night. His pants are still undone, a messy squirt of come dried on the comically pale skin of his lower belly.

As soon as she notices that, she registers the crust of lingering fluid on her hand, the trace of sharp scent when she brings it close to her face. And there, suddenly pulled to the surface, is a razor-edged shard of memory, sweat and stench and violation, and a voice saying _Keep it all inside_ —

She folds her legs up against her chest and forces herself to breathe slow and deep until the wave of nausea retreats. She is not there. This is not that.

When the shaky terror has receded as much as she thinks it’s going to she gets up and scrubs her hand clean at the wash-basin, holding the cloth tucked in the crook of her left elbow.

She looks over her shoulder at Max, peacefully asleep under the rumpled blanket, the morning light catching the plane of his cheekbone, the flecks of gold in the stubble on his chin. Without warning she feels a hot flash of anger, raw and possessive. Because this is _hers,_ these secret moments of comfort and slow-unfolding pleasure, and she will defend it as surely as she defends the water and the crops and their hard-won stronghold.

She makes herself take five more deep breaths before crossing the room again. She tries to slip back into bed without waking Max, but he stirs, scrubbing a hand over his face. He smiles when she settles down on the pillow next to him.

“Time is it?” he mutters.

“Just dawn. Don’t have to get up yet.”

He’s giving her a searching look. She keeps her face carefully blank. The warm nest of the bed and his body next to hers is delicious, and she doesn’t intend to soil it with thinking any more about the past, let alone trying to explain it.

“Okay?” he asks, his brow furrowing a little.

“Yes.” She gives him a smile and he seems to relax. She curls up against his shoulder again, feels him rest his chin on the top of her head.

“Good,” he says.

 

Without any discussion, they are both careful to change nothing about their behavior toward each other during the day. She crosses paths with him briefly in the garage, but mostly her time is occupied with other things.

But pieces of the night before keep presenting themselves: the feeling of his hand on her breast and his damp breath against her neck, the little sound he made when her fingers brushed against his cock, the look on his face while he licked his fingers clean—

“Furiosa?”

She’s been zoning out in the council meeting, the thread of the discussion on crop yields totally lost. Capable is watching her with a look of kind concern, Toast with a raised eyebrow.

“Sorry,” she says. “Go back to the bit about the irrigation system?”

 

That night she bolts the door, unstraps her arm and the leather bodice underneath, and then she grabs a handful of his jacket and pulls him against her. He goes easily, a smile on his lips as they meet hers, his hands warm on her waist. She wraps her arms around him, holds him closer, lets him press her against the wall as his hands roam. Her thigh slides easily between his, and when he grinds against her she rocks back into it, rutting up against where he’s already growing hard. His hand is on her ass and his fingers clench suddenly, digging into the tender flesh at the back of her thigh. She gasps.

Instantly he pulls back. “Too much?”

She shakes her head. “I like it.” She meets his gaze for a brief second, and he’s smiling again. “I like the way you touch me,” she says, hooking her half-arm over the back of his neck to pull him in for more kissing. Because she does like it; he is careful and achingly aware of her every reaction, but there’s a hunger to him that sends a deep spike of want into her gut.

“I was thinking about you today,” she breathes as his mouth trails hot down her neck, a little scratch of stubble that makes her shiver. “Thinking about you touching me. Making me come.” He makes a tiny noise, barely more than breath against her shoulder. “Were you thinking about me?”

She can feel him swallow. “Yeah.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Ah…”

She pulls back enough to look at him. His cheeks are flushed. She raises an eyebrow.

“Mm. Getting my mouth on you. Making you come like that,” he says without quite meeting her gaze. And—she can’t say she hasn’t thought of that, but hearing him rumble it out in his rough voice sends a flood of heat through her.

He licks his lips and she has to kiss them. “I would like that.” And kiss them again. “Let’s do that.”

His hands slide under her shirt, peeling it off over her head, helping her unroll the strip of cloth around her breasts, and then his mouth is on her flushed skin, seeking out sensitive spots she didn’t know she had, making her arch as his lips trail down her stomach. She hears his knee pop as he kneels but he doesn’t seem to pay it any mind. When he reaches for her belt he looks up, not so much a hesitation as a check (the way you look for your mates in battle, it strikes her— _are you still with me?_ ) and she nods.

He tugs down her leathers, nudging her to spread her legs as wide as she can, which isn’t much but suddenly enough for his tongue to run a broad swipe and a teasing flick against her. She gasps and he makes a small satisfied noise that just makes her gasp again. He noses into her, urging her legs a little wider, stubble scraping against the soft skin of her inner thigh, and she braces herself against the wall and leans into him, letting her knees bend to open her legs wider. _He knows what he’s doing, doesn’t he?_ she thinks before she loses interest in thinking at all. His hands curve around her ass, holding her while he slowly explores, finding the things that make her moan and sending her up, up and over the edge gasping with her hand fisted in his hair.

When he stands up his knee cracks again, and this time she sees him wince, but he’s still smiling, his mouth and chin wet with spit and slick that smears on her face and neck when he kisses her.

He presses his face into the hollow of her jaw and mutters, “Again?”

She laughs out loud, because her legs are shaking and both of them are still catching their breath. “On the bed?” she suggests.

And then she’s flat on her back, her boots and trousers and his jacket discarded along the way, and he’s doing it all over again. She can spread her legs wide this way, and the angle means he can push his tongue into her and lick and suck everywhere, and he does, and before she knows it she’s on the edge again, her legs twitching until it’s too overwhelming and she has to push him away.

He slides up to lie next to her and wipes his absurdly wet face on the sheets, and then he cracks his jaw with a rueful expression and she doesn’t know why it makes her laugh but the sound that comes out of her might legitimately be called a giggle. It sets off a chain reaction and they’re both laughing, if the noiseless little wheezes he makes can be counted as such.

When they both catch their breath there’s something strange in his eyes, something sad. “What?” she asks.

He shakes his head and makes an indecipherable hum.

She’s suddenly aware that she’s completely naked and he hasn’t so much as taken his boots off. His erection has gone down some but the bulge in his pants is still noticeable.

She puts a hand on his thigh just below his crotch. “Try again?”

He swallows and nods.

She slides closer to him, close enough to feel his breath on her face and smell the lingering scent of his sweat and her juices mingled together on his skin. She slips a hand under the hem of his shirt to slide it up, catches a brief touch of hot skin and firm muscle before he pushes her hand away with a curt shake of his head.

“Okay,” she assures him. 

He rucks up his shirt just enough for her to unbuckle his belt, unlace his trousers enough to get her hand inside. He huffs out a ragged breath when she curls her hand gingerly around his cock.

Now that she has more than three seconds to work with she realizes she has no idea what to do.

“Show me how you like it?” There’s some shuffling around and then his hand slides down to wrap around hers.

She lets him move her hand in the rhythm and pressure he likes, his face pressed tightly into her shoulder the whole time as tiny grunts and sighs escape him. It’s strangely intimate, letting him guide her to touch him the way he touches himself.

He lasts longer this time, but not long, his fingers digging into her back as he comes messily over his lower belly again. She manages to position her hand to avoid most of the stickiness this time, although something about it isn’t so bad when he’s right there with her, his damp breath against her collarbone.

After she pulls her hand out of his pants his arms wrap suddenly tight around her. He is silent for a long time, shaking a little, his breathing raw. She isn’t quite sure what to do so she just curls around him, her half-arm against the back of his neck and her whole one over his hunched shoulders.

“Okay?” she asks after a while.

He nods against the crook of her neck. “Just. Been…a long time.”

“Since someone touched you?”

“Since it was.” He swallows. “Like this.”

She doesn’t know what he means by that, exactly, just that he’s still shaking, so she keeps holding him close. If she’s allowed to keep her wounds hidden, she won’t pry into his.

He had someone before. Someone cared for, someone loved. She’s sure of it now, just as sure as she is that whatever the end of it was, it was painful.

She holds him until her left arm starts falling asleep under the weight of his head on her bicep.

“I’m gonna clean us up, okay?” she says as she untangles herself slowly. He’s back to not meeting her gaze.

She wets the washing cloth and wipes her hand and between her legs, then cleans up the drying mess on his hip and lower belly. She turns the tangled sheet around so the spot where some of his come dripped is away from where they’ll be sleeping. Eventually he sits up and fastens his pants, takes off his boots and brace. She hadn’t at all minded being stark naked next to him in the bed, but it’s cold now even with the warmth of his body to count on, so she puts on her sleep clothes for what little insulation they offer.

Finally she extinguishes the lamp and slides into bed next to him again, pulling the blankets over them. He’s lying on his side, features just visible in the moonlight.

He reaches out to run a rough thumb over her bottom lip. “You…” he starts, but can’t seem to finish.

She snuggles up against him again. “It’s okay.” She runs a hand through his messy hair, scoots closer when he moves to curl up around her. “Get some sleep.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, bet you thought this WIP was dead! Nope, just needed me to be unemployed again.
> 
> Heads up for some pregnancy-related body horror/gore toward the end of this chapter.

They’re lying on the bed, already breathless and rumpled with kissing, her bare breasts pressed against the rough fabric of his shirt. He breaks the kiss for a moment, pulls back enough to look at her while his fingers trace over her cheekbone, down the line of her jaw. “What do you want?” he asks, his voice husky.

It’s disconcerting, the way he’s looking at her, like she could ask for anything and he would do it. Like being given something fragile that she doesn’t trust herself not to crush.

She knows what she wants, though. “Can I see you?” She’s already half-naked and once again he hasn’t so much as taken his socks off, and it’s not that she minds being naked next to him, but she keeps wondering what it would feel like to be pressed up against his skin.

He blinks, seems to need a minute to consider the request. Then he nods with one of his quiet hums. He sits up and tugs his shirt over his head, quick, like he might lose his nerve if he thinks about it too hard.

“Oh.”

She knew he’d been brought in as a bloodbag, but somehow hadn’t put it together that he’d have a tattoo, that that might be part of why he would be reluctant to disrobe. She’s never seen one up close. No—she had seen but never _looked,_ never wanted to think too closely about the human being who was draining into her the few times she’d been hurt badly enough to need it.

She puts a cautious finger on his back, near the scrawled line reading _UNIVERSAL DONOR_. He flinches at the touch but doesn’t pull away.

“Do you want me to read it to you?”

He makes a noise she can’t decipher, then clears his throat and mutters, “Sure.”

“Lie down. It’s hard upside down. And—” He shuffles down to lie down halfway on his side, like he can’t quite relax enough to lie on his stomach and leave his back fully exposed. “It’s very scratched.”

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Scratched a lot.”

Clawed his skin off, more likely, judging by the scars. The bottom part of the tattoo, where his bound hands could reach, is mostly illegible, but she can make out a few phrases. Some of the words are long and unfamiliar; she resists the urge to follow them with her finger.

“Day 12045”—mothers, nearly two moon cycles before the road war accidentally freed him—“something…ten hands…no lumps…this bit is mostly scratched off…” She can still make out _Piss OK Genitals intact,_ and frankly she’d rather not, but it feels dishonest not to read out everything.

“O-nega-tive high oc-tane uni-ver-sal donor…” she sounds out carefully. The part higher up on his back, out of the reach of where he could scratch, is clearer. “Lone Road Warrior run down on the Powder Lakes, V8, no guzzoline, no supplies. Iso-late…pu—p-sy-ch—” She stops. “I’m sorry, I don’t know this word.”

“Mm. ‘S...‘s okay. ‘S enough.” He’s lying dead still, one hand clenched into the sheets.

She lies down next to him, puts a careful hand on his ribcage. When he doesn’t seem to object to that she curls around him, her hand on his chest and her body pressed against his back. He draws a shuddering breath. His heart is hammering way too hard beneath her palm, his breathing fast in a way that has nothing to do with lust, and she can feel him trying to hold himself as rigid and still as possible, but he’s shaking.

“Hey.” She tries to keep her voice soft, remembering the way he comforted her after the nightmare. “It’s okay. You’re safe.” One of his hands finds her wrist and squeezes. She lies still, her face pressed against the muscle of his shoulder.

He is just as damaged by this place as she is, but he hadn’t turned around and pulled others into its clutches. She hadn’t been raiding on the Powder Lakes that day, but she’d brought in plenty like him—plenty like her, too—and convinced herself not to remember their faces or listen to their cries. It was easier than you would like to believe.

Gradually she feels his body unclench, his heartbeat steadying out. His chest is hairy, a novel sensation after being surrounded by War Boys, waxed and shaved to show off their scarification or just to hide how patchy illness was making their hair. Slowly, she lets her hand explore, tracing over hard planes of muscle and knotted scars. He doesn’t stop her. He shivers when her fingers trail down his stomach.

He moves all at once, rolling over to wrap her in the circle of his arms. His mouth crashes into hers, as if something intense and hungry has suddenly cracked open inside him, and then they're kissing fit to swallow each other whole. It’s a strange thrill, to be the object of this make and model of desire, that feels like vulnerability instead of possessiveness. She presses into his warmth, letting her hands run over and over the planes of his muscled shoulders and back. If she doesn’t touch the scars on his lower back it’s easy to pretend they’re not there.

They’re grinding deliciously against each other, her hip rutting against the bulge in his pants, and all she can think of is getting more of him, touching more of him, letting him fill her. Yes—she wants that, she realizes with a giddy shock. Her pants suddenly seem like an intolerable barrier and she tugs them open impatiently.

“I want you to fuck me.”

“I thought—” A breathless murmur a millimeter from her lips.

“I know. Don’t come in me. But I want you—” She’s busy working at his laces now, then he’s taking over for her and she’s shoving her own pants down her thighs and between them they wriggle the bare minimum of leather out of the way. He slips a hand between her legs, groans into her shoulder when his fingers slide easily through wetness.

And then he’s shifting on top of her and—fuck, she said she wanted this but she never really appreciated the bulk of his chest and shoulders before; he’s mostly holding his weight off her but he is still very _large_ —yes, closing her eyes is better—his cock is nudging at her entrance and then pushing, stretching, sliding inside—deep breath out; it's okay, you’re safe; it’s always the initial stretch that hurts the most—and it doesn’t hurt, not really; she is wetter than she can ever remember being and he is slow and gentle when he starts moving inside her, his breath coming in rough pants against her neck. She digs her fingers into his back and tries to expel memories from muscles that keep wanting to clench, memories of being held down, being held open, being slimed with seed and sweat and white powder—

It seems like hardly any time passes at all before Max makes a strangled yelp and pulls out abruptly, just in time to splatter a hot sticky squirt onto her inner thigh. It’s through long practice that she manages to repress a shudder.

“I— Sorry.” He’s on his hands and knees between her legs, his eyes squeezed shut. His cheeks are very red. “That was. Not good.”

She wants to tell him it’s the least bad she’s ever had, that if they kept trying together maybe it could even be good, but she can’t think of a way to say it that won’t sound like an insult for something that is not remotely his fault.

Her limbs feel buzzy and disconnected in a way that’s definitely not post-orgasmic bliss, but she makes her hand move up to touch his cheek. “Hey. It’s okay.” When he opens his eyes his gaze slides away from her.

He gets hastily to his feet, tugging his pants back up over his hips, and she thinks she’s said the wrong thing despite trying not to—but no, he just crosses to the wash basin, wets a clean cloth and brings it back to clean her up.

He’s wiping the come off her leg, but she can still _smell_ it and it makes her stomach clench. “M’sorry,” he mutters again. He leans down to kiss her midriff, and she manages not to pull away. “Wasn’t…very good for you. I know. I could…” His hand fans out across her lower belly.

“I’m fine.” He looks up at her, questioning. “Really. It’s fine. I promise.” She arranges her face into what she hopes is a gentle smile. 

He doesn’t look convinced, but he gives a nod of assent and gets up to use the toilet alcove. By the time he’s finished pissing and cleaning himself she’s reasonably confident she’s projecting an air of sleepy calm.

She’s not sure if he’ll want to talk about it, what happened and how to make it better, and she has no fucking clue what she would say. But when she says, “Let’s sleep,” he just nods and kisses her softly on the forehead, and she’s relieved enough that it’s not a problem to let him slide an arm around her and tuck her against his chest.

 

In the dream she is pregnant. Not just pregnant but obscenely swollen, her belly distended like a corpse full of gas, skin tight as a drum and riddled with bruise-colored stretch marks.

She is in the Vault—of course she is—lying naked on a mat beside the pool, the hot breezeless air pressing down like a physical weight on her chest. She tries to get to her feet but in every direction her ponderous belly holds her down—crushing her when she lies on her back and making her flail uselessly when she rolls onto her side.

“Hey.” Max is there beside her, and there’s a momentary flash of relief—surely he’ll help her—before she sees the long knife in his hand.

He’s crouching between her legs, rolling her onto her back like it’s nothing although the weight of her belly feels ready to suffocate her. “I am so sorry,” he says, and he does look genuinely remorseful as he aligns the knife point below the grotesque curve of her lower belly. “But that’s mine.”

He slides the knife in to the hilt, and she can’t scream, she can’t even breathe as he slices her open from hip to hip. Blood and fluid sluices out of her, pouring over his hands and soaking the mat. He reaches into the gash and pulls something out of her, something gore-streaked and wriggling with far too many arms and legs—

 

She wakes up with her hand clamped over her mouth, and old reflex to keep silent whatever panic-stricken noise wants to come out of her. She is certain she’s woken Max, but when she rolls over from where she’s curled up against the wall he’s still sound asleep, sprawled out and snoring lightly.

She scrambles out of bed and lurches toward the toilet alcove. In some still-functioning part of her brain she realizes her bladder is full to the point of discomfort and empties it, and then she stands with her forehead pressed against the stone wall, fighting down nausea and bitter rage.

She has no idea how long she stands there, but eventually she realizes that what she’s shaking from is no longer nightmare adrenaline, but cold. She’s still clothed the way she fell asleep, in her leathers with nothing on top. She takes time to tug on her sleep top with numb fingers.

Max does wake up when she crawls back into bed, muttering a sleepy, vaguely question-shaped noise. “It’s fine,” she whispers. He’s rolled over onto his side, and she tucks herself against him, and if she turns her back to him and breathes slow and even he won’t be able to tell how long it takes her to fall asleep.


End file.
